Preparing for the Third Decade of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program (2012) / Chapter Skim
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5 Coordination, Cooperation, and Collaboration
5 Coordination, Cooperation, and Collaboration
Pages 109-126
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From page 109... ...
It offers a vision for the nation and a strategy to address many key national needs, both for and by the many agencies and organizations concerned with water quality -- not just NAWQA. This is a vision that the committee strongly supports.
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From page 110... ...
· Collaboration: Taking coordination one step further, collaboration implies working together to conceptualize, plan, fund, and implement activities that lead to a larger understanding and programmatic impact that could not have been achieved if NAWQA and its partners acted independently. The development of the comprehensive Science Plan with the input of the NAWQA National Liaison Committee (NLC)
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From page 111... ...
NAWQA'S VALUE IN A REORGANIZED USGS: COOPERATION, COORDINATION, AND COLLABORATION WITH USGS MISSION AREAS AND PROGRAMS NAWQA's scope and success providing a national perspective on the status, trends, and understanding of factors that affect water quality have made the program a visible and respected focal point within the Water Mission Area of the USGS.1 As noted in past reviews (NRC, 2002) , many 1 Other programs and activities within the Water Mission Area include the Groundwater Resources Program, the National Streamflow Information Program, Hydrologic Research and Development, Hydrologic Networks and Analysis, the Cooperative Water Program, and the Water Resources Research Program.
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From page 112... ...
The realignment also created a new Office of Science Quality and Integrity tasked with monitoring and enhancing the quality of USGS science. The 2009 NRC report, Towards a Sustainable and Secure Water Future, pointed out that critical water-related issues occur within most if not all new USGS Science Strategy directions (now mission areas, in the official reorganization)
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From page 113... ...
To be effective in this effort the Cycle 3 Science Plan, NAWQA should more clearly identify how its goals are linked to the newly formed USGS mission areas framed from themes in the USGS Science Strategy."
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From page 114... ...
Although the committee's second letter report challenged NAWQA leadership to communicate capabilities to the reorganized programs and to seek collaborative opportunities that would help meet the needs of the Science Plan that go beyond NAWQA, it also noted that such communication should be a two-way street. The committee would hope that USGS uses the reorganization to improve internal coordination and potentially leverage NAWQA data and analysis for use in the other program areas.
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From page 115... ...
These efforts fostered various partnerships and activities including local and state use of NAWQA data and SPARROW for Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) ; some local, jointly-funded p rojects (various projects on Source Water Assessments to protect public drinking water systems, such as Vowinkel et al.
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From page 116... ...
The committee was asked if this vision and related questions would meet the nation's needs in Cycle 3. Liaison committee members expressed strong support for: · continued assessment of four major issues: excess nutrients, contaminants, sediment, and streamflow alteration; · the planned rebuilding of the NAWQA status and trends networks in Cycle 3; · coordinated water programs to leverage existing investments; · a more robust national reference site network; and · integration of monitoring, modeling, and understanding studies at multiple scales to forecast water-quality and ecosystem response to large-scale future changes (i.e., climate change and demographic change)
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From page 117... ...
During Cycle 1 and part of Cycle 2, USGS placed staff as formal liaisons within several national offices of EPA to enhance coordination. USGS Water Resource Discipline staff liaisons were in residence in EPA's Office of Water and worked in support of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
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From page 118... ...
Hence, NAWQA and USGS' Toxics program monitoring data have provided important insights on unregulated contaminants in ambient waters and in the source waters for drinking water systems that have been used in the CCL, CCL Reg-Det, and UCMR development processes. In turn, NAWQA has reviewed the CCL as it considered which contaminants to include in its own monitoring schedules.
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From page 119... ...
In Cycle 1, NAWQA sampled ecological data at approximately 87 NAWQA sites, which were then augmented with a few hundred EMAP sites. Although the data had been collected with different field methods, researchers were able to develop a model to account for method bias, and the final ecological model was stronger for integrating both data sets (Carlisle and Hawkins 2008)
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From page 120... ...
The OPP uses NAWQA data and technical assistance to characterize the occurrence and trends of pesticides in water as part of risk assessments and implementation of the Food Quality Protection Act.11 The OPP also uses NAWQA data directly in its Government Performance and Review Act, Program Assessment Rating Tool, which measures environmental outcomes of the OPP's programs. NAWQA has been of particular value because it is an independently derived national data set that can characterize pesticide trends and impacts on water quality (NRC, 2009)
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From page 121... ...
. In cooperation with the New Hampshire Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, part of EPHTN, the USGS New Hampshire-Vermont Water Science Center, with assistance from NAWQA, designed and developed a New Hampshirespecific arsenic model (publication forthcoming, J
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From page 122... ...
18 uses NAWQA products to evaluate the interactions between agriculture and water quality, particularly nutrients and pesticides. ERS relies on NAWQA synthesis reports to establish links between agriculture and observed regional water-quality and has adapted data and model coefficients from NAWQA and S PARROW to improve ERS models.
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From page 123... ...
as the role of study units has declined. To mitigate the loss of Study Unit Liaisons, NAWQA built stronger relationships with the USGS Water Science Centers during Cycle 2.
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From page 124... ...
The use of ancillary data, when paired with modeling efforts, can extend NAWQA efforts into local areas without a NAWQA presence to bolster national coverage. To illustrate, the use of ancillary data has dramatically increased SPARROW coverage in the southeastern Major River Basin (MRB)
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From page 125... ...
The Cycle 3 plan indirectly suggests that NAWQA will need to pay particular attention to its design in preparation for this more ambitious agenda. In the past, NAWQA has revamped its model operations as it has evolved -- largely to cope with resource constraints -- from the original study unit design to the Major River Basin "building blocks" to maintain a capacity to conduct national assessments.
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From page 126... ...
To operate in this more expansive mode, NAWQA should consider engaging partners and collaborators more directly in the development of mutual science plans, seamless exchanges of data and information, and joint implementation of work plans that identify shared responsibilities and accountability. Collaboration could be particularly critical at this point in time given the current fiscal climate and the continued decline of monitoring networks in the United States.
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